Performing with radiophonic instruments, unique homemade electronics, micro-watt transmitters, and re-purposed objects, ANNA FRIZ, JEFF KOLAR and ERIC LEONARDSON create intimate atmospheres traversing acoustic and electro-magnetic space. Together their work can be characterized as a mindful collaboration with vibrational surfaces and unstable circuits; and with subtle treatments of potentially noisy, often lo-fi materials from which highly detailed landscapes emerge. Though all three artists have worked with one another in various constellations in Chicago and internationally, this concert is their premiere outing as a trio.

ANNA FRIZ is a Canadian sound and radio artist who specializes in multichannel transmission systems for installation, performance, and broadcast. She also creates dynamic, atmospheric compositions for theatre, dance, film, and solo performance equally able to reflect upon public media culture or to reveal expressive interior landscapes. She has performed and exhibited widely across North America, South America, and Europe, and her radio art/works have been heard on the airwaves of more than 25 countries. Anna is a steering member of the artist collective Skálar | Sound Art | Experimental Music, based in east Iceland.

JEFF KOLAR is a sound artist and curator working in Chicago, USA. His work, described as “speaker-shredding” (Half Letter Press), “wonderfully strange” (John Corbett), and “characteristically curious” (Marc Weidenbaum), includes cross-platform collaboration, low-powered radio, and live performance. His work often activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways using appropriation and remix as a critical practice. Jeff is a free103point9 Transmission Artist, and the founder and director of Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform.

ERIC LEONARDSON is an audio artist, composer, sound designer, instrument inventor, and performer. He co-founded the World Listening Project and Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and serves as President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a performer, composer, and sound designer, Leonardson provided sounds of the Chicago based physical theater company Plasticene. With the Springboard, a self-built instrument made in 1994, Leonardson explores unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere, and microtones.